On May 31st, 2018, Northwestern University and Deerfield Management announced the launch of Lakeside Discovery, LLC, with the mission to accelerate the translation of transformative biomedical technologies. Deerfield will provide up to $65 million of targeted funding and deep development expertise to advance promising Northwestern research.

Lakeside will tackle projects approved by a joint steering committee comprised of members from the Northwestern and Deerfield scientific leadership teams. The Northwestern committee members will use their experiential scientific knowledge, in consultation with Deerfield, to assess each proposal’s potential biological and commercial success.

Projects will be selected based on many criteria, with an emphasis on the novelty of biological insight, regardless of its stage of development. Projects accepted by Lakeside will be supported with a complete development plan, including vital experiments needed to reach Investigational New Drug (IND)-readiness in an expedited time frame.